Twitter used to be an open network and Facebook used to be a close one. Not any more. Facebook is opening itself up. Why? Revenue generation thru Google based visitors has a lot to do with this change. The Freemium model (charging users for some extra services) does not work so far and Facebook users don’t click on ads as much as non users do.
According to The Economist, social networks have benefited from search engines’ desire to get their hands on more content. So Bing and Google have signed deals with Twitter in order to integrate tweets on their search results. This is the only reason that could explain that Twitter made some profits last year, something that has been rumoured.
This is also why Facebook is changing its privacy rules in order to be able to place some ot its users’ contents in external sites. Facebook is not making profits so far and it is having a hard time to do so, though it is already the world’s second largest site. Making revenues from search engines would be one of the best options.
Facebook is treading into some dangerous waters by considering deals with Google and Bing. Facebook users seem to be hyper concerned with their privacy and if deals like this go through, the number of users that are moving away from the social networking giants like MySpace and Facebook to the smaller online communities is going to change from a trickle to a flood.